First contact

2022 was promised to be the year Pakistan sends its first person into space, or at least that’s what former Science and Technology minister Fawad Chaudhry announced two years ago. According to him, the selection process was meant to start in Feb 2020, when fifty people would have been shortlisted, a number that would then be reduced through elimination until the first Pakistani went into space. Beyond this single announcement, we haven’t subsequently heard anything about it so one can assume that, for now, Pakistanis will just have to content themselves with Twitter spaces.

But the space race certainly isn’t waiting on Pakistan and 2021 has been a rather stellar year, pun untended, as far as space exploration goes.

On December 25, NASA, with help from the Canadian and European space agencies, launched the James Webb telescope, a technological marvel that can, thanks to the mind-bending properties of the space-time continuum, potentially see as far back as 200 million years after the Big bang, the theoretical starting point of the universe, and thus be able to see the first stars and galaxies being born.

If that’s not exciting enough, the Webb telescope – thanks to its infrared capabilities — will also be able to search for and examine exoplanets to an extent that the Hubble never could; the infrared allows it to pierce the dust and gases of the atmospheres of exoplanets to be able to find ‘biosignatures’ such as the presence of oxygen, water vapor, carbon dioxide and other gases that we deem essential to life as we know it. The telescope may also be able to detect gases that may have been released as the outcome of industrial activity, which would then indicate the presence of a fairly advanced alien civilization. At long last, we may have the answer to the eternal question: ‘are we alone in the universe?’

For all we know, the answer to this may well be found in our own solar system as just a few weeks before the Webb telescope launch came the revelation that the European Space agency’s exomars orbiter had found evidence of ‘significant amounts of water’ beneath the surface of Mars’ Valles Marineris canyon system. And if studying our own planet has taught us anything it is that where there is water, there is almost certainly life.

Even Earth’s hot and hellish twin Venus may hold some surprises; While its thick atmosphere consists mostly of carbon dioxide, causing a runaway greenhouse effect that creates surface temperatures capable of melting lead, scientists have recently found traces of phosphine gas in Venus’ atmosphere. The big deal is that Phosphine gas is only produced (on earth at least) by anaerobic bacteria that do not need oxygen to survive. Thus, there is now speculation that Venus’s atmosphere may well be home to a form of life unlike anything we have seen before.

The discovery of extra-terrestrial life, even if it’s just bacteria, would certainly be among the most significant moments in human history, and one that will have ramifications and effects far beyond the scientific field. Granted, on a cultural level science fiction has somewhat prepared us for the possibilities but the reality of it will shake the foundations of accepted knowledge.

How would Earth’s religions react, given that for the most part they are anthropocentric, placing humanity at the center of the created universe which, until a possible First Contact, was of course limited to earth?

The closest historical example we can find of what may happen is the experience of Copernicus and Galileo. Copernicus, building on the work of astronomers like Ibn Yusuf and Ibn-al-Shatir and others, first proposed the heliocentric model, arguing that it was the sun, and not Earth, that was at the center of the solar system. This flew in the face of the Church doctrine, which placed Earth at the center, leading to a prohibition on Copernicanism. Copernicus himself died soon after publishing his thesis and so faced no real persecution but Galileo, who built upon Copernicus’ work, was tried by the inquisition and declared a heretic. Eventually, of course, the Church had no option but to bow to reality. 

Today, the effects of First Contact will not be limited to a single nation or belief system and so, scientists have long been arguing for the establishment of an international body to develop protocols for such an occurrence in order to minimize potential shocks. Thus far, while individual nations may have developed some rudimentary plans, a global consensus is nowhere to be seen. And as far as preparing Earth’s belief systems for contact with extraterrestrial life goes, NASA has indeed been funding Princeton University’s center for theological inquiry to “assess societal implications for NASA’s astrobiological and search for life efforts,” the findings of which are to be published in a series of scholarly articles. For now, the truth is still out there.

*Zarrar Khuhro is a Pakistani journalist who has worked extensively in both the print and electronic media industry. He is currently hosting a talk show on Dawn News. Twitter: @ZarrarKhuhro